DANICA KEVI NONTASAK

This marks Part II of the conversation among Weng Ian Kitsana, Danica Kevi, and Phuong Mai.

Danica Kevi: ​​In [Indonesia], it's a norm to wear our traditional wear [daily]. Batik, [another Indonesian traditional clothing Dias wore for this shoot], is usually worn every Friday. From Monday through Thursday, people wear suits, dresses, or whatever to work. Fridays are called Batik Day, and you pay respect to your country by showing up in your cultural wear. That's the casualness of traditional wear in Indonesia. 

I challenge myself to incorporate Indonesian stuff, like an Batik skirt or a Kebaya top, to my everyday wear or when I go to a wedding, but I never really thought about how empowering doing that was until this shoot. 

Even helping [the other models] put their outfits on or asking them, ‘How do you wear this? And what's important about this?’ has helped me learn about [these nuances]. It's just such an eye-opener. 

For example, with the Filipino dress, particularly the sleeves, I was trying to help Raelene put it on and I saw that it was flat so I thought, ‘Let me poof it up.’ And [Raelene] said, ‘Oh, no, no, no, it's actually supposed to be flat. It’s the most important thing about this dress. This is the sleeve.’ And I said, ‘Wow, that's really cool. That's super unique.’ I wouldn't have known that if I didn't help her and she was vocal about that. 

I think we look at traditional wear as just one layer. It's so different like X, Y, and Z, but there are so many more layers that come with each traditional wear that makes it so empowering and beautiful. We've just scratched the surface with this too, right? 

Even with Thai wear, it was a no-brainer that I wanted to wear Thai traditional wear for my wedding [to represent my mixed Indo and Thai heritage], but I don't know every single piece on what that means. The jewels [Weng] wore on her arm — I don't know what they mean. [Those details] make me want to dig deeper into my own culture and [learn] what each garment and accessory means. 

Mai: I didn't realize that your own role in [producing this photoshoot] and helping the models put on their dresses has taught you a lot, as well. Each of us in our own role of creating this photoshoot and this campaign has provided us different takeaways from the experience. For example, Weng, as the photographer, you're witnessing or observing the models’ movement in their dresses, and what that looks like. With Kevi, you're learning a lot because you're helping them put their dresses on. Then my conversations were more of a deep dive of their own relationships with their culture. I think it's kind of cool how each of us had a specific experience of learning with each traditional wearer.

Weng: Yes, I agree that it is a lot about how they move while I'm photographing them.It was also interesting to watch how each model warmed up to being in [their dress]. You can tell who wears [their dress] all the time and who rarely wears it. You can gauge their comfort levels. Just trying to provide that safe space for people witnessing them start to embrace it [at different paces] was a beautiful process to watch. 

Mai: In a lot of conversations when I asked, ‘How do you feel?’ The models’ responses were, ‘I feel the prettiest right now. I feel the most pretty in myself right now.’ That's such a powerful statement to say, ‘My most beautiful is when I get to wear my own cultural wear.’

Weng: I love that there's a mix of first-generation and second-generation Asian Americans, but there are also a good amount of immigrants in our pool of models. I did feel really empowered being in my traditional wear, but I know I wouldn’t feel that same level of empowerment if I was wearing it back home [in Thailand] because it’s so normalized – people wear it all the time. 
My personal experience when I moved [to America] has been a lot of coping and adjusting to American culture, which is shoving some parts of myself into a box. Now, I'm finally at a spot where I'm privileged enough, I have my own career and everything, and I can tell myself, ‘You know, I can be a little more Thai.’ It was a very empowering process putting on that Thai dress. This is who I am. I know Thai isn't just about the clothes or the food or anything, but this [dress] on me is what makes me feel more connected to being Thai here. This experience has really allowed me to merge my Thai upbringing with my [newly formed] American identity a little bit more. Both sides of Weng can still exist, and I don't necessarily need to prioritize one over the other because they're both me. 

Kevi: Our traditional wear is so unique and so specific, but they’re also a conversation starter. I love that these photos are going to start a lot of conversations. I love how people are going to share like, ‘Oh my God, have you ever seen this [dress] before? I didn't know that Indonesia has this [fabric] or I didn't know yet. Or is it worn this way?’ I think it's just amazing that we're able to be who we are and carry our own culture and our own history through our wear. We can be the starter of conversations and open up more eyes to Asia. People just think about food, but there's so much history and culture and beauty, and all these things, that I think we're pushing that. We're starting [those conversations] by doing this. 

Mai: One of the biggest things I've learned, too, is since you're both immigrants and I'm not, there is this middle of not belonging in either [culture]. It's this idea of duality and how it's not always a binary effect – you're not this or that. There's an in-between, and that's a very new concept, honestly, with the third culture generation. It’s a lot of navigating, ‘Where do I fit in? Where do I belong?’ 

In the same way [Kevi was] saying there's so much more to Asian cultures – not just what we're wearing or what we're eating – but even that weird middle that's still not talked about. Especially in Asia, this concept of belonging is so real because in a lot of Asian cultures, there's a standard and if you're not in that standard, then you're not fitting in. If you don't fit in, then you're just the outlier. It's this weird piling up of constantly feeling on the outside of something. We're almost building our own version of Asian cultures, too. It's not just continuing legacy and holding true to those values, but also trying to say, ‘Okay, there's a middle here that we're kind of creating on our own.’ A lot of what we need to understand and push forth, especially in these modern conversations, is where we are making space for even the gray weird areas that don't exist yet.

Kevi: That was one of the main reasons why we started [Now You See Us] to begin with, where every single story or every single experience any person identifies with as Asian, is true and is real. We want to create space for that person to feel seen and to feel invited to a family. I think it's interesting how Asians in America tend to be clique-y to our own cultures. Even for me, when I first came here, I only hung out with Indonesians. It was a safe space. It was what we knew going into a foreign country. It's so easy to lose yourself in America because in America you have to be this, you have to talk a certain way, you have to be understood like this. But finding that middle and gray area, or a little bit of this and that, and learning from other cultures, while creating our own [enmeshed] family, is a beautiful thing. It's going to be a never-ending experience and journey, but these little things that we do just create so much space for so much more. 

Weng: I think about that in terms of how it applies to my life, my legacy, and what my kids are going to feel. I’m shooting for citizenship here [in America], so how are my kids and the people who come after me going to feel about their Asian heritage, especially if I already feel [lost in some] way? I moved here [when I was] pretty young, so it felt like I had to say goodbye to my Thai-ness or Macanese-ness in order to survive and make it here. I spent so many years trying to say goodbye to [those parts of myself] and try to grieve that goodbye. Now, I'm trying to resurrect it. But I'm resurrecting it in a different way because I've added a whole new world into my life, and I'm not sure what that looks like yet. The people who come after me, what is that [legacy] going to look like? Am I going to be able to expose my kids to Asian culture in a way where they're not going to feel like they can't be from [mixed cultures], or they can't be multiple different things? It's just a big question mark for me.

Kevi: [My husband] Steph and I want to do our absolute best to support our kids in exploring their cultural identity in their own unique way. Our kids are going to be a mesh of ethnicities; Indonesian, Thai, Jamaican and American. If I had trouble with my identity growing up, I can only imagine how their experience will be. 

Since I grew up primarily in Indonesia, it felt like I was only told how to be Indo. So those were the only values I carried out. I couldn’t call an elderly person only by their names. It was always miss so-and-so, or auntie, or uncle. I had to be respectful all the time, first and foremost, and that's all I knew. So moving to the states, it was really hard calling Steph's older family members by their first name. It felt disrespectful and it was really uncomfortable for me. But I learnt that there are so many other ways to pay respect and live out my values without feeling like I’ve lost that side of me. This is the kind of experience I wish for our mixed children, to be able to explore different values that align with theirs without the feeling of guilt or shame just because of where they are from. 

Read Phuong Mai’s story for Part III